Monday

14 September 2015

From a writer friend*:

Look, you and I will never agree on the issue of gay marriage. I don't support it. It goes against not only my religion but the way I was brought up. Where you and I agree is in regards to Kim Davis. It comes down to the fundamental issue of the separation of church and state. She does not have to believe in gay marriage, but she should also not cross that line of mixing government with her religion. The rest of it really doesn't matter. One side is harping on her hypocrisy for doing this wile talking about having the authority of God on her side when she's been married so many times, has committed adultery, and had children out of wedlock. The other side is defending her with the idea that she became a born-again Christian after all of that, so she is forgiven. Those things don't matter.The only thing that really matters is that we have separation of church and state, and we have it for valid reasons. We have it so that I am free to worship in a way that makes gay marriage seem wrong to me; you are free to worship in a way that makes it seem all right to you. We have it so that my kids can go to school and not have to recite prayers that are not of our faith, and we have it so that we don't fall into the trap of theocracy, which would turn the United States into something else, some place where the Sharia Law that so many claim to be against become the de facto law of the land.It boggles me that there are people who think that because gay marriage is not technically legal in KY that all the gay people who get married there are breaking the law. It's federal law now, so it doesn't matter what the state says.And like you said, keeping an oath is right there in the Bible.I won't ever agree with you on gay marriage, but what these so-called Christian defenders of Kim Davis are doing is just wrong.

This was a conversation that went on for a while, and a few other people joined in. There was no name calling, no finger pointing, no YER WRONG SO GO KILL YERSELF hysterics. It never got personal.

We just talked.

No, we will never agree on the point of gay marriage; from where I stand, my personal beliefs should have nothing to do with what other people do as long as they're not hurting anyone. I don't accept the sanctity of marriage argument, because as a group straight people have done a hell of a lot to destroy that anyway. But the biggest thing for me is that what you do is none of my business.

You say that, but if the Mormons decided to bring back polygamy, I bet you'd think different.

You think? I might surprise you.

I never accepted what I was told about plural marriage when I was a member of the LDS church--that it was necessary because there were more women than men and women needed to be protected under the umbrella of the priesthood--and had a feeling it existed because Joseph Smith wanted a reason to screw around (and I still think so.) I don't understand the appeal nor the want of a plural marriage.

But...if you're not trying to marry 12 year old girls and every person who is a part of the arrangement is a consenting adult of legal age, it's none of my business. If that's how you want to live your life, why should my opinion even matter?

Do I find it a bit creepy?

Yeah, honestly I do. But it's not my life, not my marriage, not my problem.

State law should be followed, though. If what other people are saying is true, that gay marriage is illegal in KY, why can't that be enforced?

Federal law > state law > city ordinance.

When laws conflict, it essentially falls to the order of operations. A state law will always be the rule over a city or county ordinance, and federal law trumps state law.

It really is that simple. So no matter what the law on the books in KY is (and I honestly don't know) the fact that gay marriage is legal in the U.S. at the federal level makes it legal in KY.

So then why is this even an issue? If federal law trumps state, why is she even doing this?

Someone else's answer:

The easy answer is martyrdom. She becomes the figurehead for a movement trying to bully their way into changing a law they don't agree with. Another easy answer is that she wants the attention. No one takes a stand like this, a stance that defies a law that is basically fair for everyone, unless they want attention. I doubt the crux of the issue is actually a intent to put an end to it; my gut says this is another push of the religious right. They want to "put God back into our country," but they're not looking ahead. You have a group that yammers on about our President being a closet Muslim, how the terrorists are winning...and yet they want to insert their religious beliefs into our laws. They fail to see the irony. There is no appreciation for the fact that they are asking for exactly what they complain about. In short: Kim Davis is doing this because she doesn't understand that if we allow religion into the workings of our government, we risk becoming something akin to the fringe, to the hard-core religious terrorists that are destroying the Middle East. (I should clarify, I don't think Muslims are terrorists. I do think a high percentage of the religious right in the U.S. do.)

That was said far nicer than I would have. I wanted to say she was an attention whore using religion as an excuse for her actions (because honestly, the longer this goes on the more it feels to me like she's enjoying the hell out of it. I'm ready for her to be non-news, and I'm especially ready for Tea Party-like thinkers to just stop and thinks about what they really want.

Government by religion is not it.

And he's right...the fundamental thing about the entire issue of Kim Davis and gay marriage is the separation of church and state. That's what it's about. And why she needs to resign, if she feels so strongly against it.

4 comments:

That was well said. And I agree...she is free to have her beliefs and I don't have to agree with them. But if she is going to hold public office and get paid using Kentucky tax dollars, she has to do her job (and not just say "it's ok for my clerks to do it but I won't") or get out.

I honestly have no idea why she is doing this, but I do believe there is a great deal of 'moment of fame' in it.

I read somewhere that she doesn't want her signature on the license to certify that it is acceptable that they marry. (I have NO idea if this is true or not) and in that limited scope of things I can agree that this is a religious issue, but if that was the case, then she should have gone to someone and said that she could not okay these marriages, and ask for that particular duty be given to someone else. but that was not the case. Someone else said that no one else could sign the certificates, which is obviously not true because when she was in jail someone else did, and there was argument by co-workers that if they were told to not sign by her, they were going to sign anyway and risk her firing them.

There is a very very narrow window of this being a religious issue, and she opened up that window full throttle, knocked out the wall and pretended it was a door, and then decided to kick the whole house down and then yell stop ruining my house.

I'm very much of the belief that what happens between consenting adults is fine, as long as all parties really ARE consenting. I have never understood why some people feel it's okay to push their religious beliefs on anyone else. There is a reason why our forefathers wrote the Constitution to explicitly state there should be freedom of and from religion, and why there is a separation of church and state.

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